Anthony Stadlen is a Daseinsanalyst, existential psychotherapist and family therapist, supervisor and teacher working in London. He is also founder and convenor of the Inner Circle Seminars: an international, interdisciplinary, ethical, existential, phenomenological search for truth in psychotherapy. This blogsite contains details of therapy and of past and future seminars. For therapy or seminars contact Anthony Stadlen at: +44(0)20 8888 6857, +44(0)7809 433 250, or stadlen@aol.com.

Reflection on the philosophy of psychotherapy is an urgent necessity. The survival of true psychotherapy is threatened by state regulation. Too few psychotherapists have insisted, with Thomas Szasz, that ‘mental health’ is a metaphor. It is therefore not surprising that the Government plans to regulate psychotherapy as a ‘health profession’. The Inner Circle Seminars, however, seek to clarify psychotherapy as a moral, not a medical, practice.

Thomas Szasz remains the world’s foremost moral and existential philosopher of psychiatry and psychotherapy. He has already conducted two Inner Circle Seminars. He will conduct another on 13 June 2010 for his 90th birthday (15 April 2010), 50 years after his paper ‘The Myth of Mental Illness’ (1960) and book The Myth of Mental Illness (1961), a new edition of which will be released by HarperCollins in March). In preparation for his 90th-birthday seminar, we are studying in turn his ten books published since the millennium. Today we discuss his ninth 21st–century book, Psychiatry: The Science of Lies (2008). Each seminar is self-contained.

The Inner Circle Seminars were founded by Anthony Stadlen in 1996 as an ethical, existential, phenomenological search for truth in psychotherapy. They have been kindly described by Thomas Szasz as ‘Institute for Advanced Studies in the Moral Foundations of Human Decency and Helpfulness’. But they are independent of all institutes, schools and colleges.